More reading comprehension issues in Linux

Discussion in 'all things UNIX' started by Mrkvonic, Aug 15, 2016.

  1. Mrkvonic

    Mrkvonic Linux Systems Expert

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    We didn't start the fire. 'Tis a conflagration. Anyhow, here's a second article discussing the alarming, rising trend in the lack of acceptance of criticism and feedback on technological issues in the Linux community, most notably the clear trend of deterioration in quality across the majority of distributions in recent years. Lean back, read, and enjoy, I mean, cry.

    http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/linux-reading-comprehension-continued.html


    Cheers,
    Mrk
     
  2. Joxx

    Joxx Registered Member

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    Nuff said, and this is from someone who uses Linux full time.
    Good article.
     
  3. The Red Moon

    The Red Moon Registered Member

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    I use linux exclusively and have done for a couple of years and i can safely say i have had less issues with linux then i did with windows.Of course everyones experiences will differ.
     
  4. NormanF

    NormanF Registered Member

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    Artem S.Tashkinov has written a long detailed criticism of Linux, its regressions, unfixed bugs, lack of support for new hardware and lack of QA/QC standards. Not to mention the absence of a common desktop/packaging system. In a word, its broken - often intentionally when a new distro version comes out. Lots of reasons why Linux isn't ready for the desktop.


    http://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.the.desktop.current.html
     
  5. Kerodo

    Kerodo Registered Member

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    The rising lack of quality and increase in bugs etc is not a linux only phenomenon. IMO, Windows 10 is pure junk too, one huge buggy mess that never gets cleaned up from upgrade to upgrade. I would say there is a general lack of quality coming from everywhere in the software world. It's a huge trend, and it sucks.
     
  6. The Red Moon

    The Red Moon Registered Member

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    Very interesting read.Thank you norman.
     
  7. NormanF

    NormanF Registered Member

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    People should stay on LTS on Linux and let the bugs get fixed.

    On a rolling release, you may get the latest software but you also get more bugs.

    There's a trade-off between stability and new features. New features aren't worth it if they don't improve the user experience.
     
  8. Amanda

    Amanda Registered Member

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    People seem to have short memories. Every edition of Windows was buggy when they came out: 95, 98, 2000, XP was very buggy as well and didn't work on a ton of hardware because it was too resource-heavy, Vista too, 7 was worse than Vista when it was in RC (buggy as hell), 8 improved a lot but forced the Metro start, and now 10 is a mess comparable to Vista.

    Sometimes Windows support for home users is way worse than community support for Linux. E.g. I have a spare keyboard that I like a lot, but doesn't work on Windows 10 because it will freeze on boot and the only workaround is to re-plug it. I do give Microsoft kudos for doing a remote session and wasting hours trying to figure out the issue, but their response at the end was basically "Buy a new Keyboard" or "this isn't our problem" instead of let's report this issue to the developers. The Keyboard works perfectly on any edition of Windows prior to 10, and the problem is not 10? Yeah, right. This made me use a 1994 Keyboard that I had laying around.
    Another problem is EMET on Vista/7/8/10 machines without TPM or Bitlocker running. I created this thread with a workaround that worked at the time, but the workaround doesn't work anymore.

    Similar problems happen on Linux (e.g. AMD introducing driver bugs, so is VALVe on a few games for Linux), so it's not like Linux is in a road to hell, but all operating systems are constantly pulling themselves from the fire pit.

    On an Enterprise level, Redhat and Canonical offer support just as Microsoft does.

    I can't say that's what happens in Arch, which as many of you know is my only and favorite distro. It only has around 35 developers, but it's packages are always more up-to-date than say Debian Sid (that has hundreds if not thousands of developers) and the packages are always of a greater quality. I've had more problem running Ubuntu LTS for 3 days than running Arch for more than 3 years, not to mention it's way easier to maintain Arch running. Debian Stable also gave me lots of headaches, and Sid can be a complete bit**. I really don't know why this happens, but one of the reasons is that Debian and it's "children" are much more complex than they need to be.
    On Arch, I don't even read bug reports or RSS feeds anymore because I know the chances of encountering a problem are slim (unless using the terrible GTK stuff, but blame GNOME), and if a problem arises I can only "pacman -U earlier-package-version.pkg.tar.xz" and report the problem upstream.

    In this case, using a bleeding edge distro is way less risky than using Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

    For some things, this is true. In fact, I just left Linux once again because I can't do proper OpenCL rendering or play a few of my favorite games on Arch. However, this is not a "Linux" or an Arch problem or distro-specific per say, but an AMD issue, their driver for my card is complete horse sh*t ATM. Do I blame Linux, the community or Arch? No, I blame AMD.

    Any lack of software or support for Linux desktop is, in the majority of cases, blamable on the developer (e.g. Adobe). You simply can't compare Microsoft, a multi-quadrillion dollar company, with what happens on Linux desktop distros or projects, driven mostly by people that work for free with small development teams. This is stupidity.

    And who is a fault here?

    It would be nice if you stated WHY you think this is, because just saying "it went from good to crap" means absolutely nothing to us here.

    As @The Red Moon correctly stated above, everybody's experience is different, and that applies to Linux, BSD's, MacOS, and Windows. I, for instance, installed a variety of Linux distros on dozens of different laptops that range from old to the very latest, and only heard back because of problems 4 times, which I promptly and easily fixed. Does this mean my experience defines Linux across all platforms? No.

    Thinking that Windows is magic and that it always "just works" because you haven't encountered many problems, and that Linux doesn't because you've encountered problems, is on the list of "what NOT to do in order to not look like an idiot". Some people realize their experiences don't define the overall picture. Some don't.
     
    Last edited: Aug 17, 2016
  9. Anonfame1

    Anonfame1 Registered Member

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    The only issue Ive had recurring with Linux in the last 3 years is the damn GTK theme nightmare- that is truly a pain and I am seriously considering switching to all QT and gtk2 apps. I had a kernel that wouldnt boot, but that was a grsecurity patched kernel, not either of the two available in the main Arch repos (both worked fine). I have (in the past before I was sensible with backups) lost my entire software life 3 times on Windows (ntfs failure); I have not once ever lost data on Linux. Even the one time I had btrfs take a crap (3 years ago on an experimental partition), I could still read and recover the data.

    Software has problems. The more complicated it gets, the more problems it will have. I have had more problems in the last 3 weeks upgrading to Windows 10 (had to use the tool because Windows update was broken on a fresh Windows 7 install), installing applications/drivers, and upgrading to the Windows 10 AU than Ive ever had upgrading Arch in the entire 7 years Ive used it. I am certainly not alone here.
     
  10. NormanF

    NormanF Registered Member

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    Windows is rock-solid and reliable. I had a crash a couple of days ago that knocked out the start up logo screen in the BIOS and I thought Windows was hosed.

    But it still booted up and was still running strong. Even many years later, Windows XP on people's machines is still performing well.

    Linux isn't ready for the desktop in part because it doesn't have a central organization to guarantee quality control and quality assurance. And if even you grant Mrk here may have a rather finicky laptop - but that's not the real issue.

    The real issue is people expect software to work on their computers. You get that consistency with Windows, which eases a lot of the pain and makes life bearable. When Linux fails to meet that standard, its not worth bothering with it.

    Linux developers and fans don't want to admit it has real problems and that's not the author's fault for pointing them out.

    If they got fixed, Linux would have a bright future.
     
  11. The Red Moon

    The Red Moon Registered Member

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    I think it should be pointed out that in the above linked article it does state that windows itself has issues too.
    You say that windows is rock solid and stable on your system,well you see thats the problem as that is on your system.
    You say that windows is stable and i say it isnt....so whos correct lol..?
     
  12. Amanda

    Amanda Registered Member

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    I wouldn't say that this works too well for Windows. Who approved the Anniversary Update that borked a ton of installs? Who approves the bork-tuesday updates? Who approved the malware-like behavior to push Windows 10? To me, Windows is not a good model when it comes to "quality assurance" of updates.

    On one side, that's actually a good thing. One central control is not freedom, it's dictatorship and impositions of the dictador's vision, be it good or not. However, I would agree that the community of Linux users and developers are morons when it comes to not creating actual standards that would benefit the community, like one single package format and package management for everybody, or audio servers. And the GNOME people, they need to get their crap together because they're greedy AF (just like the systemd guys) and don't care when they break things for other people.
     
  13. Amanda

    Amanda Registered Member

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    You won't regret a bit. GTK is terrible if you're not using GNOME. I use Firefox on KDE with no problems at all.
    I had to ditch MATE completely because of how GNOME updates screwed it over and over.
     
  14. Baserk

    Baserk Registered Member

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    Nope. Vista wasn't too resource-heavy. It just allocated mem differently/used memory for what it's there for; to be used. It's using electricity anyway.
    Especially those folks who were so proud of continuously 'trimming' XP to run on <256MB, started foaming at the mouth when seeing Vista actually using (yes, using) the 2GB that, well, folks had already paid for when buying their pc/laptop.
    Vista's main issue were the hardware companies, refusing to actually deliver proper drivers for the OS.
    With Vista SP3Win7 this seemed to be already forgotten.
    You already know the answer here.
    It's 'regression'. Or Regression with a capital R.
    Or 'Jezus H. Christ on a bicycle, Fuc* this REGRESSION!!! Fffffuuuuuuu!!!' when you're all alone at the office/home
    You know that Mrk has written numerous articles about numerous installs of numerous distros in numerous iterations on much, much more than one piece of hardware.
    So imao it seems a bit rich to come up with horses and brackets as a retort.
     
  15. Amanda

    Amanda Registered Member

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    Which is exactly why it was inefficient and resource heavy for that time when it launched. I had a PC with 256 MB of RAM at the time that was running XP fine, but then Vista ruined it all, it was impossible to use the PC for more than text editing. Vista improved a lot with SP1 and then SP2, but at launch it was a mess for current hardware, regardless of what it was doing with RAM.

    You know, if Vista was to be continued, I'd be using it to this day. It's my favorite Windows OS.

    That is also too generic. "Regression", "it went from good to bad", it's like swaping "6" for "half a dozen".

    I understand, but don't you think it's a bit rich to say that Linux users can't even watch Youtube on Linux "because it breaks all the time"?
     
  16. Joxx

    Joxx Registered Member

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    That's not exactly what he said:
    YouTube was used as an example of the "better things to do" when your system is stable enough.
    This is an example of the "reading comprehension issues" he talks about.
     
  17. Amanda

    Amanda Registered Member

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    You're right, thanks for pointing it out :thumb: I just edited my commend.
     
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